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By Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D.
 Spirituality is intrapersonal. It’s
a liberating and uplifting awareness. It nurtures personal growth. It
inspires more conscious perceptions. But when personal spirituality
is organized into a religion, an institution is produced and, as all
institutions, it then produces a hierarchy who concoct dogma that has
nothing to do with spirituality and everything to do with maintaining
social and political control.
The Roman Catholic Church lied about and covered-up decades of child abuse
by priests. When finally exposed, they responded by banning “gay priests.”
But as Kathryn Conroy, assistant dean of Columbia University’s School
of Social Work, pointed out in a New York Times piece following the Vatican’s ban on “gay priests”:
What is forgotten in all
of the hysteria about priest sexual abuse is that pedophilia is about
a sexual attraction to children (most often, regardless of their sex)
and about access. …
Reliable studies show that
pedophiles (those adults who sexually abuse children) are overwhelmingly
heterosexual. In fact, homosexuals are statistically underrepresented
as those who sexually abuse children. …
Further, women have far lower
rates of sexually abusing children than men do. So if the church were
really serious about protecting children from sexual abuse by priests,
gays would not be excluded from the priesthood and ordination would
be extended to women.
But the Church isn’t really interested
in gender equality or protecting children. Its only interest
is protecting itself, which accounts for the decades-long cover-up and
the scapegoating of gays. Consider these examples from the Philadelphia
district attorney’s report on sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests:
An 11-year-old girl was repeatedly
raped by a priest who took her for an abortion when she became pregnant.
A teenage girl was groped
by a priest while she lay immobilized in traction in a hospital room.
A sadistic priest enjoyed
having children play the roles of Jesus and other biblical characters
in parish Passion plays. He made them disrobe and whip each other until
they had cuts, bruises and welts.
Moreover, the Church doesn’t seem interested
in real people at all. Again, their prime directive is maintaining
dictatorial social (and political) control through their anti-human
dogma.
The 300-year Unholy Inquisition and the
subsequent wholesale slaughter of the native peoples in the “New World”
are part of the Church’s bloody history. One would have thought they’d
have learned from their inhumanity to humanity. They didn’t. Dogma
first, people second.
In the 1980s – when Africa was experiencing
a terrible drought and a devastating famine – Pope John Paul II, replete
in his papal splendor, addressed a huge crowd under the blazing hot
African sun.
As the television cameras panned out,
viewers saw a sea of people, mostly women, most with a child on each
breast, many with older children at their feet. All the children were
fly-covered, emaciated and had grotesquely distended abdomens: the marks
of famine, the omens of death.
“His Holiness” was preaching against birth control. Was JPII saying “God” likes to see suffering and
dead children? It was difficult to read any other message into his dogmatic
pronouncements.
Pope
Benedict XVI recently continued his predecessor’s ignominious, hypocritically
tradition:
Vatican City – Pope Benedict
spoke in support of Christian marriage and traditional family values
Sunday [October 8, 2006], urging couples to resist modern cultural currents
inspired by hedonism.
“May Christian couples
build a family that is open to life and capable of handling, united,
the many, complex challenges of our times,” Benedict said as he delivered
his traditional Sunday blessing from his window overlooking St. Peter’s
Square.
“There is a need for families
who won’t let themselves be swept away by modern cultural currents
that are inspired by hedonism and relativism,'” the pontiff added.
“Hedonism and relativism”: the pontiff
said that while wearing his gaudy, hedonistic robes and vestments of
gold, silk, fine linen and, no doubt, the high-priced Italian designer
leather shoes he seems so fond of.
“Hedonism and relativism”: the pontiff
said that from the balcony of what, relatively speaking, can only be called his palace, the Vatican.
Hypocrite, n.
One who [professes] virtues that he does not respect…
– Ambrose
Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Benedict has repeatedly damned the love
of two adults who wish to validate their monogamous, family-building
commitment to each other through the state-sanctioned civil union called “marriage.” He seems to believe the Church can dictate to
civil, secular governments: “Pope Tells Canada To End Gay
Marriage,” “Pope Assails Gay Marriage
Ahead Of Visit To Spain,”
“Spain’s PM Tells Catholic
Church To Keep Out Of Gay Marriage Debate.”
The pope has consistently been told by national governments to butt out.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean
Chretien, a Catholic, has supported a proposed law that would conform
to court rulings in defining marriage as a union between two people,
rather than a man and a woman.
“As prime minister of Canada,
he has the moral responsibility to protect the equality of Canadians,”
spokesman, Thoren Hudyma, told the Globe and Mail newspapers
in explaining that Mr. Chretien's duty was to the public, not his Church.
–
AP, July 31, 2003
In Belgium, where three-quarters
of the population is Roman Catholic, the Flemish Christian Democrats
who voted in favor of the law [legalizing same-sex unions] said the
issue boiled down to supporting all kinds of families. “For us, what's
important is sustained relationships,” said Luk Vanmaercke, a party
spokesman. “We do not want to exclude gay couples from sustained relationships.
On the contrary, we want to encourage them to take that responsibility
too.” …
“It's the Vatican’s good
right to make statements like this [opposing marriage equality], but
here in the Netherlands, we have separation of church and state,'”
said Kathleen Ferrier, a spokeswoman for the largest Dutch conservative
party, the Christian Democrats.
–
AP, July 31, 2003
Not surprisingly, more and more people
are seeing that “That marriage
‘fence’ excluding gays isn’t protection, it’s bigotry.” Nevertheless, scapegoating and condemning gay people are the pope’s forte. But the Vatican is not
the most homophobic organization. That distinction belongs to
an evangelical Protestant organization: the Traditional Values Coalition
headed by Rev. Louis P. Sheldon.
Sheldon’s and the TVC’s unbridled
hatred of gay American is nothing short of legendary, as are their bogus
claims and vile attacks. One of their favorites is that gay men and
women have a clandestine underground network dedicated to preying upon
children in order to “recruit” them into homosexuality.
Washington Post columnist Eugene
Robinson recently exposed rabid Republican Lou Sheldon
– a Jack Abramoff beneficiary – and the TVC’s anti-gay
“bunk” in relation to
the Mark Foley scandal:
One of the central tenets
of anti-homosexual doctrine is the notion of “recruitment” – that
adult gay people lure young people into homosexuality as a way of increasing
their numbers. The most extreme anti-gay activists perceive a full-fledged
conspiracy. The Traditional Values Coalition, a group whose homophobia
can only be called rabid, goes so far as to claim that, after being
enticed into sexual acts, the “young ‘initiates’ into the strange
world of homosexuality are to be trained to reject the moral beliefs
of their parents.”
This is complete bunk, of
course – most new research has tended to support the idea that homosexuality
is more a matter of nature than nurture, and in any event the notion
of an organized “recruitment” drive is far beyond ridiculous.
Mr. Robinson’s truth-telling obviously
lubricated lying Lou who asserted “research and news reports over
the past decades show clearly that homosexuals molest children at far
higher rates than do heterosexuals.”
Wrong again, as usual. To reiterate Dr.
Kathryn Conroy statement, “reliable studies show that pedophiles …
are overwhelmingly heterosexual. In fact, homosexuals are
statistically underrepresented as those who sexually abuse children”
[italics added]. Furthermore, according to a new study in Pediatrics: The Official Journal of the
American Academy of Pediatrics, children are at greater risk for
sexual abuse by their parents than the fictitious marauding groups of
organized homosexuals Sheldon claims are lurking everywhere just waiting
to pounce.
Not surprisingly, Sheldon retaliated by citing articles from Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily, an outlet that regularly features articles
by Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, and David Limbaugh. WND is also very
fond of articles claiming Armageddon is near. One of WND’s most recent offerings was “Why liberals channel Lucifer.”
Can the ultra-conservative evangelical
Christian Right really be confused about why young people are rejecting
and abandoning them “in droves”? From The New York Times
article “Evangelicals Fear the Loss
of Their Teenagers”:
Despite their packed megachurches,
their political clout and their increasing visibility on the national
stage, evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their
teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves.
 Life – especially for a teenager –
should be celebratory, not filled with the doom and gloom, fire and
brimstone evangelicals love to rain down on everyone, including their
own kids. As the muse Serendipity said in the 1999 film Dogma, some Christians – especially bible-thumping,
everything-is-a-sin, we’re-right-all-others-are
-wrong evangelical
Christians – don’t celebrate spirituality, “they mourn it.”
And rightfully so, since they’ve killed it with their concocted, oppressive,
anti-human dour dogma.
Dogma n, [L dogmat-,
dogma, fr. Gk, from dokein to seem] 1a: something held as
an established opinion; esp: a definite authoritative tenet.
B: a code of such tenets <pedagogical ~>. C: a point of view or
tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds. 2: a doctrine
or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and
authoritatively proclaimed by a church.
“From dokein to seem… established
opinion… a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative
without adequate grounds... formally stated and authoritatively
proclaimed by a church” [italics added].
Dogma is the unsubstantiated opinion
of someone or some group that must remain as is despite ever-changing
social, cultural and political realities. As one definition in the
OED put it, dogma is “an imperious or arrogant declaration of
opinion” which uses itself as its source of authority: a perfect description
of sophistry, irrationality and the ultra-conservative Christian Right.
So what did the evangelical elders blame
for the teens’ mass exodus?
Certainly not themselves or their message
of intolerance, hate and bigotry:
I want you to just let a
wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred
wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation. We
have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country.
We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.
– Randall
Terry, currently a Republican candidate for the Florida state senate
Certainly not their own hysterical preaching
that everyone who disagrees with their extremist agenda is innately
evil and the cause of all the world’s evils:
The feminist agenda is not
about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political
movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children,
practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.
– Pat Robertson
I really believe that the
pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the
lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle,
the ACLU, People for the American Way – all of them who have tried
to secularize America – I point the finger in their face and say “you
helped this happen. … [God allowed] the enemies of America to give
us probably what we deserve.”
– Jerry
Falwell on the cause of the 9/11 attacks
Certainly not the preposterous anti-knowledge,
pro-ignorance claims made by prominent leaders of the evangelical Christian
Right:
The Bible is the inerrant...word
of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all
matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as
geography, science, history, etc. [italics added]
– Jerry
Falwell
They blamed “a pervasive culture of
cynicism about religion, and the casual ‘hooking up’ approach to
sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop,
rap and rock music.” Ho-hum. How predictable.
Perhaps these self-righteous evangelical
leaders should take a closer look at themselves and their “morality”
that was so well represented by Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and, of course, murder advocate Pat Robertson.
The law-and-order judicial hero of the
ultra-conservative leaders of the Christian Right is Antonin Scalia.
Most Americans do not want
persons who are openly engaged in homosexual conduct as partners in
their businesses … as teachers in their children’s schools...
– Antonin
Scalia in dissent of the Lawrence v. Texas, June 2003
He, like they, do not believe that
every American deserves civil rights, a concept the vast majority of America’s youth have grown up with and consider “a given.”
Perhaps that’s another reason they’re leaving the ultra-conservative
evangelical fold. They see through the sanctimonious veneer of its leaders
to the bigotry beneath.
Randall Balmer, professor of American
religious history at the Barnard College of Columbia University, recently
asked a poignant question:
Where’s religious right’s
outrage now?
Where is the “moral majority”
when we need it?
In 1979, Jerry Falwell formed
an organization called Moral Majority, part of a larger initiative to
register politically conservative evangelicals who would bring their
“Christian values” into the public arena. The mobilization of these
voters, who became known as the religious right, contributed, perhaps
decisively, to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Ever since, the
leaders of the religious right have been unsparing in their pronouncements
on everything from abortion and welfare reform to Mideast policy and
homosexuality.
But on the defining moral
issues of our day, the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s use
of torture against those it has designated as “enemy combatants,”
these “voices of morality” are strangely silent.
The war in Iraq claims more
than a hundred civilian casualties a day and consumes $250 million daily
in taxpayers' money – funds that presumably could go toward rebuilding
Iraq or New Orleans, hunger relief in Africa, or the revitalization
of public education, especially in neighborhoods mired in poverty. And
yet, although the Bush administration led us into war under pretext
– the supposed al-Qaeda connection and weapons of mass destruction
– leaders of the religious right have yet to question the morality
of the war in Iraq.
Professor Balmer was correct, mostly.
Syndicated columnist Molly Ivins pointed out a notable exception: “Rev. Louis Sheldon of the
Traditional Values Coalition is so in favor of torture he told [John] McCain that the senator either
supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian
vote. I’d like to see an evangelical vote on that one. I don't know
how Sheldon defines traditional values…” [link added].
Like other leaders of the Christian Right,
Sheldon defines them politically and given the money the TVC, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council and their affiliate organizations have to spend,
they “bought” quite a few politicians to push their “values”
agenda. The Mark Foley scandal exposed that and the Republicans’ fraud,
as Eugene Robinson noted:
It's possible that the Mark
Foley scandal could finally end the phony, trumped-up “culture war”
that the Republican Party has so
expertly exploited all these years…
The Republicans wouldn't
be where they are today – in control of the White House and all of
Capitol Hill – if they hadn’t portrayed themselves as the stalwart
defenders of moral standards and painted Democrats as a bunch of anything-goes
libertines. Republicans promised social and religious conservatives
that the values they treasure would not only be respected but written
into law. …
It was a political masterstroke,
but it required creating and sustaining
an illusion – that Republican officeholders themselves not only talked
the talk but walked the walk, that in their own lives they adhered to
these deeply conservative moral standards. Human nature being what it
is, there was no way this illusion could be sustained.
So for a party that crusades
against gay marriage and welcomes voters that consider homosexuality
a sin or a disease, headlines about a gay Republican congressman lusting
after underage male congressional pages are a problem. The emerging
outlines of a coverup – allegations that the Republican speaker of
the House, or at least his aides, got wind of Foley's little problem
months or years ago – are an even bigger problem.
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts
Jr. went straight to the point in his commentary “‘Values’ party’s lack
of shame: The GOP sells itself as morally better. Inaction on the Foley
matter shows what a joke that is.”
But “values guru” Lou Sheldon has
a suggestion: get rid of all the gays in
the Republican party…
the Republican Party needs
to discuss how should it should [sic] deal with homosexuals inside
the leadership of the Party Liberal Republicans constantly talk about
the Republican Party being a “big tent open to everybody.”
As radical homosexuals have
been welcomed into “the big tent,” it has become a less welcoming
place for religious conservatives and a dark and dangerous place for
children.
Today, Republicans need to
take a long and hard look at what they have done by welcoming homosexuals
into the GOP. Republicans need to make a simple choice between the
innocent children and radical homosexuals who prey on them. [italics
added]
Lou Sheldon and the TVC are notorious
for twisting already perverted stereotypes of gay and lesbian Americans
and then using them as scare tactics. For a more thorough analysis of
this political strategy see “America’s New McCarthyism: Homosexual
Stereotypes, Myths, and the Politics of Fear,” Popular Culture
Review, 16:2 (August 2005), 83-115.
The politics of fear and divisiveness
have dominated America since George W. Bush was appointed president.
It’s no secret that the leaders of the evangelical Christian Right
pull the strings of their puppet president and other faith-based, values voting Republican politicians.
In “Civil Disobedience” Henry David
Thoreau wrote that “all voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers
or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.” He may have been
right. The results of November elections and ballot questions should be interesting…
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